Thursday, January 14, 2010

JVP on State's Right and Thomas Jefferson, and here we are in 2010, with high and increasing taxes

JVP on State's Right and Thomas Jefferson, and here we are in 2010, with high and increasing taxes

Paul R. Green Jr. [on Facebook]
CALIFORNIA
Assembly committee votes to legalize, tax marijuana - DailyBulletin.comwww.dailybulletin.com
SACRAMENTO - History was made Tuesday after the California Assembly's Public Safety Committee passed a marijuana legalization and taxation bill in a 4-3 vote, with the headed to the health committee next.
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Jonathan Vos Post

I don't use drugs, other than coffee, and a beer or glass of wine now and then. But isn't it a State's Rights matter, as Clarence Thomas wrote? Remember Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising in central and
western Massachusetts (mainly Springfield) from 1786 to 1787. Now, I'm certainly NOT advocating armed rebellion now. Yet the historical fact is that local residents, seeking debt relief through the issuance of
paper currency and lower taxes, attempted to prevent the courts from seizing property from indebted farmers by forcing the closure of courts in western Massachusetts.

Thomas Jefferson, then an ambassador to France at the time, refused to be alarmed by Shays' Rebellion. In a letter to a friend, he wrote that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty
must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

The uprising was the climax of a series of events of the 1780s that convinced a powerful group of Americans that the national government needed to be stronger so that it could create uniform economic
policies and protect property owners from infringements on their rights by local majorities. Ever since, there is a strong Federal government, willing to fire on U.S. citizens to enforce its dictates.

Here we are in 2010, with high and increasing taxes, with indebted farmers, with 1/4 of homeowners properties worth less than their mortgage debt, and with a centralized government that has, for
instance, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), which was renamed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and transferred to the Department of Justice under the Homeland
Security Act.

Families who grew their own tobacco, or brewed their own liquor, are just out of luck. It is our history. Who are we to say that Jefferson was wrong?